The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine

by David Brock

  Lies about the stimulus package that had been debunked by other outlets could still find a home on Fox News. On January 29, correspondent Carl Cameron and Laura Ingraham reported that the stimulus would allow “illegal aliens” to claim “tax credits of five hundred dollars per person or one thousand dollars per couple.”45 This distortion was first reported in an Associated Press article that cited a single GOP aide as its source. A revised version of the AP article, which was available before Cameron and Ingraham went on the air, made clear that the stimulus limited tax credits to people with Social Security numbers, ruling out undocumented immigrants.

  Fox News also attempted to link the stimulus bill to other liberal bogeymen that were targeted on the network. On January 29, Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy claimed: “They are spending $4.19 billion for neighborhood stabilization activities—ACORN. Four billion for ACORN. Let me get this straight. So we’re giving four billion dollars for ACORN.”46

  The bill did not mention ACORN at all, and, of course, the organization never received the $4 billion. ACORN had received tens of millions of dollars in total from the federal government over the course of more than a decade. To suddenly suggest the organization would now be eligible to receive billions in a single year was completely disingenuous.

  Meanwhile, Glenn Beck seized on the stimulus debate to whip his audience into a McCarthyite frenzy, alleging that Obama was on par with some of the past’s greatest monsters, informing viewers on February 4 that he would show them how the president’s policies “line[d] up with some of the goings-on in history’s worst socialist, fascist countries.”47

  Appearing on The O’Reilly Factor two days later, Beck told guest host Laura Ingraham, “We are really truly stepping beyond socialism and starting to look at fascism.” Ingraham had opened the interview by comparing Obama’s policies to the Soviet Union and asking, “Which five-year plan is this more like, the first one in 1928 or the last one?”48

  Beck continued his Red Scare tour on the February 10 episode of Fox & Friends. “It’s the nanny state. They’re going to tell us what we can eat, they can tell us what our temperature needs to be in our homes, they can tell us what kind of car to drive, they can tell businesses how to run their businesses,” he declared. “It’s slavery. It is slavery.”49

  The next day, on his own program, Beck went even further. “You know what this president is doing right now?” Beck said. “He is addicting this country to heroin—the heroin that is government slavery.”50

  Fox News jumped on every story, no matter how specious, that might turn viewers against the stimulus bill. Perhaps the most far-fetched claim was that the legislation allocated $30 million to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse in then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district. On the February 11 edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, Mike Huckabee stated that the legislation included “thirty million dollars to save the malt—excuse me, the salt marsh mouse in Nancy Pelosi’s district. Thirty million dollars for a mouse.”51 Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, was given a weekend program on Fox News after leaving the 2008 presidential campaign trail. Additionally, he serves as a political commentator on the network.

  The next morning on Fox & Friends, correspondent Caroline Shively continued to report on the false story without checking any of the facts.52 Fox created such a buzz that Greg Sargent of The Washington Post investigated the claim and found no evidence to support it. Rather, House Republicans and Fox News appeared to have created a talking point based on nothing more than hearsay:

  How did this one get going? Yesterday a House Republican leadership staffer circulated a background email, which I obtained, charging that GOP staffers had been told by an unnamed Federal agency that if it got money from the stim package, it would spend “thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area—including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.”

  The GOP staffer’s email didn’t say what agency it was. It didn’t say the money was actually in the package—just that an unnamed agency had said they would spend it on that if they got it.…

  But I just contacted the House GOP staffer who wrote the initial email laying out this talking point, and he conceded that the claim by conservative media that the mouse money is currently in the bill is a misstatement. “There is not specific language in the legislation for this project,” he said.53

  Of course, being proved wrong didn’t change the way Fox News covered the story. Just hours after Sargent’s report debunking the lie was published online, Beck announced, “Nancy Pelosi put twenty million dollars into the stimulus package to preserve the salt marsh mouse.”54

  Fox’s misleading stimulus coverage was capped off with a three-day special hosted by Bret Baier that aired February 14–16 and repeatedly misrepresented the content of the bill. Among other falsehoods, the network aired claims that the bill would lead to “the government deciding which procedures you can have and which ones you can’t”55 and that it would prohibit any religious activity in facilities receiving money.

  In addition to painting the president as a reckless liberal spender, Fox News continued its quest to portray him as un-American. Obama’s first trip outside of North America as commander in chief in April, to attend the G-20 and the Summit of the Americas, offered a perfect opportunity to do just that.

  During a speech in Europe, Obama stated: “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”56

  On Fox News, Obama’s remarks were evidence that he was “blam[ing]” America. The next two sentences Obama uttered did not fit into the network’s prescribed narrative, so they were simply omitted. “But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious,” Obama had said. “Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what’s bad.”57

  Sean Hannity, in particular, continued to make false claims about what Obama said in Europe. When the president told the Turkish parliament that “the United States is not … at war with Islam,” Hannity accused Obama of “seemingly apologizing for our engagement in the war on terror.” In those same remarks Obama had stated that “Iraq, Turkey, and the United States face a common threat from terrorism” and that “we are committed to a more focused effort to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda.”58

  Fox News commentators also criticized Obama for saying that “we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation” during an April 6 press availability with the president of Turkey. For instance, Karl Rove said it was “very strange” for Obama to deny that “we have historically had, you know, a robust presence of faith in our public square.”59

  Of course, the president was making a broader point about the nature of American values. After acknowledging earlier in the speech that the United States was “a predominantly Christian nation,” Obama added that “one of the great strengths of the United States is—although as I mentioned, we have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation; we consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”60

  The attacks continued during Obama’s trip to the Summit of the Americas. Fox News personalities condemned the president for shaking hands with and accepting a book from Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and for listening to a speech by Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. The frequent criticism of Barack Obama’s handshake with Chavez was especially absurd, as Fox never denounced George W. Bush for shaking hands with brutal dictators, such as Uzbekistani president Islam Karimov.

  Liz Peek, a financial columnist for FoxNews.com, even wrote a column titled “Chavez Handshake May Cost the U.S. Billions” because it signified that Obama would “buy Chavez’ friendship
.”61

  These same attacks continued well after the president’s first hundred days ended. In June, Barack Obama spoke at Cairo University. His address was well received even by those who had differences with the president on foreign affairs. Senator Joe Lieberman, who had endorsed John McCain in the presidential election, was effusive with praise, declaring that “Obama is off to a very, very good start in a very difficult time in our nation’s history.”62 Republican senator Richard Lugar called the speech a “signal achievement.”63

  Fox News had a different opinion. Several hours after the speech, Bill Sammon wrote to the network staff, “My cursory check of Obama’s 6,000-word speech to the Muslim world did not turn up the words ‘terror,’ ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorism.’ ”64

  Bill Sammon’s e‑mail quickly became the guide for Fox News’s coverage of the event. Ten minutes after sending the e‑mail, he appeared on America’s Newsroom with anchors Megyn Kelly and Bill Hemmer to inform the audience, “Well, I make of it that he has taken us off a war footing as a nation. And it’s now clear—when you give a six-thousand-plus-word speech to the Muslim world and you don’t mention ‘terror,’ ‘terrorist,’ or ‘terrorism,’ you know, that’s not an accident.”65

  On Special Report that day, host Bret Baier reported on Obama’s speech, claiming, “The address from Cairo, Egypt, featured references to both the nine-eleven attacks and the war in Iraq, but did not use the words ‘terror,’ ‘terrorist,’ or ‘terrorism.’ ”66 Later that night, on The O’Reilly Factor, Karl Rove claimed, “He talked about confronting extremism but could never bring himself to say ‘terrorism.’ ”67 In the next hour, Sean Hannity took the criticism of the president’s remarks a step further, claiming, “Mr. Obama refused to use these words—‘terror,’ ‘terrorism,’ ‘terrorist’—or even that term ‘manmade disasters.’ But he repeatedly quoted the Quran and even accused Americans of overreacting to the nine-eleven terror attacks.”68 The theme continued on Fox & Friends the next day, with Steve Doocy saying, “President Obama was at Cairo University, he had a six-thousand-word speech, and yet, of those six thousand words, not once did he use the word ‘terrorist,’ ‘terrorism,’ or ‘terror,’ ‘war on terror,’ or any of that stuff.”69

  Fox’s analysis was incredibly misleading. The president had devoted nine paragraphs of his speech to Al-Qaeda and “violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security.”70 Experts praised the president’s word choice as a way to alleviate some anti-American hostility that had accumulated in the region due to the overuse of the word “terrorist.” Either no one at Fox News had actually read the speech, or a major part of its content was deliberately ignored in order to paint the president as soft on fighting terrorism.

  The facts did not matter. At Fox News, the start of Obama’s presidency was about establishing the narrative that he was a weak, big-spending liberal who would ruin the country. By denying the president a honeymoon, Ailes had set the tone for the rest of Obama’s term. Instead of bringing America together, as Obama had promised, Fox would work to ensure that we were torn apart. Steve Doocy appropriately closed out the president’s first hundred days on Fox & Friends by proclaiming, “It was only a hundred days. It seems longer, doesn’t it?”71

  Chapter 5

  Time for a Tea Party

  You can hang [a teabag] from your mirror, too, like fuzzy dice.

  —Fox & Friends host Gretchen Carlson

  On February 19, 2009, in the midst of a rant against the stimulus bill making its way through Congress, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli announced, “We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.”1

  Santelli’s pronouncement on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was a call to arms to those who had already benefited from the bailouts previously doled out by the Bush administration and Congress. The cry of “It’s a moral hazard”2 from a trader on the floor, was not directed toward the banks that had lost trillions of dollars betting on bad mortgages, crashing the economy in the process. And Santelli’s fury certainly was not directed at those in the exchange cheering him on. Their markets had benefited from the easy flow of credit supplied during the boom years, lining investors’ pockets and driving up CNBC’s ratings.

  Santelli was ranting against government assistance for individual homeowners, some of whom were victims of fraud, caught up in the middle of a crashing market. This pseudo-populist ranting became a touchstone for Tea Party activists as they railed against the government, yet happily enjoyed the benefits of a variety of programs. While cheers erupted on the floor of the exchange, the anchors in the studio seemed a bit surprised by the political outburst from the “on-air editor,” whose job was analyzing the movements of the market—not leading an angry mob of traders.

  The network was caught off guard as well. Despite advocating a pro-business point of view, CNBC was no place for rowdy activists. Indeed, it depended on its reputation as a high-minded business network to maintain its elevated ad rates based on catering to an elite market. Investors who were often glued to CNBC did not want bombastic political commentary mixed into the news while the market was open. In 2009, the network was also under the microscope for its bullish cheerleading of the real-estate bubble, best exemplified by host Jim Cramer telling investors to ignore warnings about Bear Stearns a few days before the bank went under. Cramer later claimed he was merely advising depositors that their funds were safe.

  CNBC quickly shut down Santelli’s organizing efforts, relinquishing any role the network had in the Tea Party protests. Ironically, CNBC’s abandonment of the Tea Parties probably helped build a larger movement. With its niche audience of investors, the station did not have the ability to compel activists into action and organize with the same gusto as Fox.

  When CNBC quashed Santelli’s activism, Fox was ready to pounce. As conservative activists and political consultants began to schedule Tea Parties around the country, the network became their primary organizing and promotional agent. In the months following Santelli’s original rant, Fox News aired scores of promos and segments on the movement, and even graphics declaring the events “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”3

  Using its false platform as a news organization, Fox News was able to bring the Tea Party into prominence in a way that clearly partisan organizations such as the Republican National Committee or the fiscally conservative Club for Growth could only dream of. Roger Ailes didn’t just embrace the message of the Tea Parties—he took Santelli’s faux populism and morphed it into a direct attack on President Obama. The Tea Party movement followed Fox’s lead, converting itself from a neo-populist, antigovernment movement into an army for the Republican Party.

  Much of the network’s coverage was based on the constant claim that the Tea Party movement was nonpartisan. However, polls consistently showed that the overwhelming majority of Tea Party members were Republicans and were primarily angry with the president. As The New York Times reported in April 2010, “The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.”4

  Furthermore, the activities of the variety of local organizations and PACs affiliated with the Tea Parties, in addition to the party of the candidates the Tea Parties endorsed, contradicted the notion of a nonpartisan movement. By portraying the Tea Party as a nonpartisan movement, Fox could essentially back a Republican campaign vehicle without technically crossing the line into partisan politics.

  Fox News provided wall-to-wall coverage of Tea Party gatherings. While only four years earlier, network personalities attacked attendees at antiwar marches attended by hundreds of thousands in New York and Washington, D.C., as “anti-American,” “morally vacuous,” and “stupid,”5 Fox now rewarded meetings attended by as few as a dozen people with hours of air time and live satellite feeds.

  “They latched on to the people who came to be known as the Tea Party people very early
on,” says Tom Fiedler, dean of the College of Communication at Boston University. “Then they covered them as news events that came to be known through natural events. It was a self-fulfilling situation.”6

  On February 27, 2009, Greta Van Susteren informed her audience: “Tea Party protests are erupting across the country. Angry taxpayers, or at least some of them, are taking to the streets in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party. People are protesting President Obama’s massive $787 billion stimulus bill, his $3.55 trillion budget, and a federal government that has been ballooning by the day since the president took office.”7

  As the coverage progressed, the message evolved. On the March 25 edition of Special Report, anchor Bret Baier described the Tea Parties as “protests of wasteful government spending in general and of President Obama’s stimulus package and his budget in particular.”8

  By April 6, the network’s coverage of the Tea Parties had begun to take a decidedly different tone, shifting from an attack on progressive policies to a direct attack on President Obama. On America’s Newsroom, contributor Andrea Tantaros proclaimed: “People are fighting against Barack Obama’s radical shift to turn us into Europe.”9

  As the April 15 Tea Party rallies approached, Fox’s promotional efforts increased. The network announced that four of its hosts would broadcast live from Tea Parties around the country—Greta Van Susteren in Washington, D.C.; Sean Hannity in Atlanta; Neil Cavuto in Sacramento, California; and Glenn Beck from the Alamo in San Antonio.